Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.

If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!

But I would watch out for one thing in here: we don't want to let the "new" movement become a pattern either - do we? Like in "from now on we always move this way..."
Why not train in a way that always has us try to feel what's going on in that moment and go with the energy... Basic technique practice has it's place in Aikido training, that's for sure, but it wouldn't be Aikido if it wasn't for the go-with-the-energy... And I am certain that after learning the basic direction of, say, Ikkyo, even beginners can very early on try to do that Ikkyo not against the partners force, i.e. adapt movement.
I let my students practice both ways (besides others) from the very beginning. Maybe that way they are not as solid at repeating a certain "pattern"/basic technique after say one year, versus students in other dojos, but I personally don't care... if you consider that we are in this for the long run anyway.

I completely agree, though, that this breaking away from set patterns is hard to do, and I believe you described well how to go about it... just don't let the new thing become a pattern again.

A side-effect of the above mentioned training is, I believe, the ability of the student to also learn a new movement. Because set patterns are not that burnt-in. I try to learn this constant adapting and being able to do new movements by going to seminars with various teachers as often as time permits (besides the other nice effects this has).

But I would watch out for one thing in here: we don't want to let the "new" movement become a pattern either - do we? Like in "from now on we always move this way..."

Well, yes and no. I agree that you wouldn't want to start thinking "from now on we always move like this" but the reality is, everything becomes a pattern. It's how ours brains work. The trick is to keep recognizing it and adapting again when it becomes necessary.

A dojo mate of mine made the observation that this is how meditation works as well - you don't try to not think while meditating, but instead recognize each thought that comes, and let it go again.

Quote:

And I am certain that after learning the basic direction of, say, Ikkyo, even beginners can very early on try to do that Ikkyo not against the partners force, i.e. adapt movement.

This is adapting movement on the level that I was speaking of in the beginning of the article. Its possible to adapt to the direction of your partners force, and always essentially stay the same "inside" yourself so to speak. Do you see what I mean?

I have to say that in my experience, even experienced people tend to repeat the same kind of mistakes in say a basic ikkyo. They just do it on a more subtle level, but the same "clash" against uke's force is still there. Or it's avoided, but not by changing something in tori, but by making big circular movements, that avoid the clash, but don't really add to the effectiveness of the technique. In order to really fundamentally change this I think it's necessary to go very slow sometimes, and not avoid the clash, but to see what really happens at the moment of that clash.

Quote:

... if you consider that we are in this for the long run anyway.

Yeah, the way I think is, if I'm in this for the long run, then there's no reason to not make experiments, I can afford the time. And sometimes something really cool comes out of it.

Quote:

I completely agree, though, that this breaking away from set patterns is hard to do, and I believe you described well how to go about it... just don't let the new thing become a pattern again.

I just wanted to repeat that I think it's inevitable the the new thing becomes a pattern...if it didn't, we'd revert to the old pattern. Or just move sort of aimlessly. The trick is to keep recognizing this.

I really liked the article a lot - thanks for writing it. I would like to add that I also found it most insightful from the point of view of psychological attachment and/or emotional behavior - where one is dealing with habitual actions/reactions in regards to the transition from, for example, material culture to a life centered on spiritual development, etc.

I'm glad you liked it David! Yes the same ...procedure or method can be used for any reaction, physical or emotional (really there's always some of both in any reaction). It's a useful skill, and it makes interaction with other people easier.

I came across this in another thread, and I thought it was very interesting:

Quote:

Hiroaki Izumi wrote:

I am not sure about learning always taking place. I think it depends a lot on your definition of learning. The Zen Buddhists talk of learning through enlightenment. This would be when there is a reformatting of how you understand the world. When there is a full reformatting, that would be like becoming a Buddha. However, the incremental type of learning that I think you are talk about, Mark, seems to be more like practice because that learning only helps to solidify that which you already know by practicing that form of thinking. It feels like more of an institutionalization than learning. It is like organizational change and transformation. Incremental change is now known, through quantitative experimental verification, to not lead to true organizational transformation, but to institutionalization of the existing culture. If you want to transform your organization, you have use the tools of the new culture to create that new culture. You can't transform an organization using the tools of the old culture. For a true organizational transformation to occur, in other words, for the organization to truly learn new behaviour, step-wise change must occur, not incremental change. It is a lot like that Zen Buddhist idea of enlightenment. That is the purpose of the Koans, to break the old pattern of thinking so that it leads to a catastrophy cusp in thinking modality. Anyhoo, I believe that true learning only occurs when that catastrophic change in ways of thinking occur. These catastrophic changes may be small but they are discontinuous from the old pattern. ....SNIP....
Rock

I think this is recognizable in for example how progress in training often seems to happen in steps followed by plateaus. Anyway, what I was trying to explain in the article was a method of getting to such a break in thinking&acting. Maybe that was already clear to anyone reading it, but I thought this made it clear from another point of view.